A5 - The epic continues

[hils]

We got up ridiculously early as we wanted to buy coffee lounge tickets and were warned that people queued ridiculously early for them. The ticket office opened at 8 and we got down there at about 6:45 and weren't even the first in line. There were about ten people ahead of us. Still, it was fun. We got chatting with each other and then Misha started tweeting (not long after I tweeted that the hardcore fans were already in line - he's mind reading again) so that kept us amused for a while.

Now I have to say that I assumed the coffee lounges were like the ones that Massive Events and Creation do where there were only ten or so people with the guest. Not at Rogue, sadly. Rogue coffee lounges are for 35 people. So my paranoia about not getting tickets was slightly unfounded. But it all worked out okay. They were selling tickets for Saturday and Sunday so I got one of each which meant I didn't have to queue up again on Sunday morning (I have to wonder if anyone actually did all four of Misha's) so that was good.

After that we went and had breakfast and then it was time for the con to kick off.

First up was an introductory panel which had all the guests on stage. We were told that Misha was running a bit late but that he was on his way. So all the guests were up on stage taking questions when a male voice comes through the microphone 'So, you've all had the pleasure of working with the awesome Misha Collins. I was just wondering what that was like.' I'm pretty sure it was more wordy than that where he went on about how working with Misha was an honour and all that sort of thing. Anyway, we all pretty quickly realised it was him and lost our shit.

He finally came out on stage and the first thought I had was how he was wearing my favourite item of his clothing (the brown cordory jacket) so I had to tweet that. I took a couple of photos but the rest is video which, as I said in my last post, is taking forever to upload onto youtube







Let's see if I can remember what was said. Everyone got asked about Halloween costumes and Misha said when he was a kid his mum made him a turtle costume because that's what he wanted to dress as, only she made it realistic so he had to crawl around on all fours. Misha said he didn't even make it to the first house before he was cold and sore and went home. He then said that for his and Vicki's first Halloween as a couple he dressed in drag, only the guys from his school didn't recognise him and started hitting on him. Vicki told him he wasn't doing that again.

When they were asked if they could play any role what would it be Aldis said he wanted to play Misha Collins. Misha then countered and said he wanted to play a black man. Aldis then started giving him lessons.

A: Come on, say 'Wassup'
M: What is up?

It was funny and the joke of Misha trying to be black continued all day with Aldis more than encouraging him.

So after that it was time for my photo with Misha which I was sharing with oddlyfamiliar because I really have too many photos with him now and I felt weird getting another one by myself. So as soon as I walked in Misha grinned at me and his eyes lit up with recognition 'Oh, hello again!' he said and I grinned back 'Yeah, fancy seeing you here' I think I said something like 'this is my friend who's joining us' and Misha said hi to her too. We were going to ask for a silly pose but it seemed pretty rushed so we opted to just have an arm around him each. I kind of hate how I look in the photo but Misha looks stunning and OMG his shirt looks like it's about to burst open and is clinging in all the right places



And straight after that it was time for Misha's panel. This, at least, I can give a decent account of (because I cheated and watched the video on my camera to remind me). Not going to transcribe the whole thing but these are some highlights.

Misha talked about Stonehenge Apocalypse and mocked us all for downloading it illegally and said in America they still have a thing called morality. He said he had no idea what SyFy movies were like when he got offered the role and he was just happy to be doing a movie. What he later discovered is that SyFy movies are intended to be watched drunk and the script writers are often told to re-write to dumb it down so that it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

He said the best part of playing Castiel is getting to do things he'd never get to in real life - like beating Jensen up in an ally (which has been a lifelong ambition of his). He realised too late that when you're filming a fight scene you're not supposed to actually hit the other person ;)

littlehollyleaf asked what it meant when Castiel said he spent a year as an interdimensional waveform of intent and Misha said he spent ages trying to work that out to the point where he actually got on the phone with the writer to try and get the line changed. And then he went off on a tangent about whether it was possible for Castiel to be both particles and waves, citing Einstein's early work as proof that it was possible. LOL!

When asked about the silliest thing he's done while drunk Misha said he used to be involved in a thing called Santacon where everyone would dress as Santa and essentially cause havoc. He talked about one time where they were all drunk, dressed as Santa and descended on a mall. One guy pulled his pants down and got arrested. Misha said he can't really remember all of it but he does remember being at the station and having pissed himself because he couldn't get out of his suit in time.

He tells such charming stories ;)

One girl asked Misha if he liked Jared or Jensen more. He started off saying it was like choosing the lesser of two evils. Then he said that he liked them both for different reasons and that when Jensen comes over he fixes things around the apartment. But immediately after that he said he liked Jared more. No, seriously, I hate them both. Actually, no I do like Jared more. Then he joked about Jensen finding the video on youtube and getting all upset with him.

He said Castiel's true form has four faces and they are a lamb, a monkey, a zebra and a cat. The cat and the monkey fight which is why Castiel looks so confused all the time as he's trying to get his head straight.

Misha still hasn't seen the gag reel and still doesn't know what 'Confetti! It's a parade!' is. Someone had some confetti and asked him to do it and we had to explain how it was said. Most amusing.

It really was a Misha filled morning as after his panel it was time for his coffee lounge. The chairs were arrange in a circle like they had been at Chicon. Don't know if it was like that in all the coffee lounges or whether Misha had requested it to be set up like that. Misha was already sat down when I got inside and people were at the back of the room helping themselves to tea and coffee.

Now, Misha likes to throw things. Pretty much every time I've seen him he's done this. When I was at Collectormania last year I was having a nice chat with the woman taking the money for Misha's autographs and Misha threw a scrunched up piece of paper at us because he had no one with him and was bored.

So anyway he was clearly bored waiting for people to get their drinks so he took the top off his bottle of water and threw it. It bounced off my knee and landed at my feet. I rolled my eyes and said 'thanks for that, Misha' and he winked and gave me a thumbs up. LOL. Not to be a litterbug I kept it ;)

So we eventually got settled and Misha wanted to know which people were from outside the UK. There was a German girl who had brought him gummi bears and it was a huge bag so he passed it around so we could all have some.

I have to say I found this coffee lounge a little awkward at times because there were gaps in the conversation where no one really knew what to say. But for the most part it was good. I couldn't think of a single thing to ask so I was happy to sit back and listen to other people. Honestly though (and I apologise for being made of fail here) I really can't remember a lot of what he said. The main story that lingered with me was when someone asked him what his biggest adventure has been. He told this amazing story about how he went on a bike tour across America with his best friend when he was 19. He said he highly recommended people doing it and said that everyone he'd encountered had been warm and welcoming. People let them stay in their homes, restaurants gave them free meals etc. He said one guy who took them in got up the next morning and told them they had to see the beautiful beach before they left. He had to go to work so he GAVE THEM HIS CAR KEYS so they could drive over and see it. It's stories like this that make me understand why Misha wanted to set up Random Acts. He's obviously met some truly amazing people in his time and wants to give a little bit of that back.

Anyway he said that he and his friend cycled about 400 miles over the summer and eventually got tired and didn't want to cycle back. They were sitting in a cafe and they asked if there were any truck stops around as with all their stuff they didn't think they'd be able to hitchike. This guy came over to them and said he had an old car that he'd tried to sell but hadn't been able to and if they wanted they could have it for free. Apparently it had been sat in his driveway for so long that there was a mouse nest in the engine (which Misha said they carefully removed). The car was a total mess but they managed to fix it up enough to get it going. The engine was so loud it sounded like a machine gun and the air vents didn't work properly so the car kept filling up with fumes. Finally they stopped at a garage, borrowed some tools and cut the roof off.

Eventually the car died and since they had no proof of ownership, the car wasn't taxed or insured they just pushed it off the side of the road (onto a golf course) and removed the plates so they could mail them back to the owner and left it there.

I swear to God that man's whole life is an adventure. I wish I was brave enough to do even a tenth of the things he has done.

He also said he and his wife went on a world tour but refused guides and got extremely lost more than once. He said one time they were in a rainforest only they couldn't find any water and were lost for two days with nothing to drink. I do wonder how he is still alive sometimes.

The other thing I remembered was Misha talking about British TV (he said he'd love to be in Doctor Who but it later transpired that this is only because it's the only British show he has heard of). So he started talking in this really bad Cockney accent (not quite Dick Van Dyke bad) and he sounded like a total creeper. I pray to God he never talks like that again.

But he did have some interesting insight on the differences between filming TV in the UK and America. He'd been talking to Mark Sheppard and was saying that in the US essentially if you're not being filmed you don't need to be on set and you get loads of free food which is always available. In the UK the actors are expected to stand around while things like lighting is set up and the food is only brought out at specific mealtimes.

And that's kind of all I can remember from that :-s

After that I had a much needed break so before heading for lunch we went on a quest to find the latest SPN ep as there was no free wifi anywhere in the hotel and we were buggered if we were going to pay £15 (that's about $30) for 24 hours. oddlyfamiliar told us to ask tracy_loo_who so we went and found her and luckily for us her friend had the ep which she very kindly put on my external hard drive for us.

Now this is possibly the most amusing part of my weekend. On a whim on Thursday night I did a post on mishaland inviting any members of the comm who were going to A5 to find me over the weekend and say the magic password (Rainbow Jizz) and I would give them a unicorn sticker to wear.

So I was talking to Tracy and her friend when a couple of girls came up to me and said 'Psst! Rainbow jizz!' and this is something that kept happening all weekend. I actually ended up giving away all my stickers to various Mishawives (if you're reading this and I gave you a sticker say hi) and it was a lot of fun. Tracy decided to wear her sticker on her face and I am now wondering if she spoke to Misha with it still in place *g*

Amusingly at one point I was walking down the corridor in a world of my own wondering whether giving Misha a unicorn sticker for himself would be a good idea or not. I was so lost in thought that I nearly walked smack into him coming the other way. I took that as a sign that I needed to give him one and it was yet another RL example of him popping up when I was thinking about him. He does it a lot when I'm talking about him on Twitter and I am starting to suspect some sort of psychic ability (and the fucker just tweeted while I was typing this. HOW DOES HE DO IT?)

So after we got the episode we broke for lunch and after that decided to go and get autographs from Misha, Jake and Julie. We got to the door and they had only just started signing. They were letting people in in groups and technically they were only on Group A (I was Group C and my friends were D). We were about to leave when the nice man at the door said it wasn't actually that busy so we could just go in.

Saw Jake first and as I had promised yellowwolf5 that I would say hi to him for her. As soon as I did he knew exactly who I was talking about (because she'd told everyone coming to say hello to him. LOL) and he said hello back.

Misha was next and as soon as he saw me he grinned again and said 'Oh, it's been so long' which was what I was going to say damnit. LOL. So I said 'I know, it's been an age. I can barely remember what you look like'.

So he looked at the photo I wanted signed and he looked at it for a good two or three minutes and then he started to laugh. Hehe! He wasn't doing personalisations because it was too busy but he did put quotes around his signature. LOL.



So I promised the Chicon Aussie's I would ask so I asked him how he was enjoying his scrotum.

'What?'

I don't know if it was that he just hadn't heard me or he was confused as to what I was talking about. I clarified and asked him if he was enjoying his kangaroo scrotum purse.

'Oh, very much so!'

'You still have it then?'

'How could I part with such a precious item'

And he grinned and I laughed. I asked him if he wanted a unicorn sticker and he said of course so I peeled one off and stuck it to his hand (Hand! Guh!) and he stuck it over his heart *g* No idea if he got the reference or not. I know he knows about Mishaland but the rules are you don't talk about it so I didn't say anything further and just left him to it.

Moved onto Julie next and I didn't have much to say to her sadly but I told her she had really pretty hair. I had a good chat with her at the meet and greet in the evening though so that made up for it.

After that it was time to get my photo with Aldis. He was adorable. He was making sure to chat to everyone before the photo and when I went up he told me I looked awesome and that he loved my jumper. Sadly I don't really like this photo of me either.



I only caught the end of Aldis's panel and I honestly can't remember a thing about it but I took a pic.



Finally we had all the guests back on stage again. Misha was wearing this rather ridiculous plastic bowtie with the American flag on it. I'm fairly sure he wanted someone to ask but no one did





Misha told an amusing tale of how when he was a kid his grandfather used to set a trap for Santa only it was a real beartrap with milk and cookies and every year after Misha had gone to bed his grandfather would spring the trap and put a bit of red fur in the trap. The plan being that if they caught Santa Misha could have all the presents for all the kids in the world.

And if you were wondering why Misha is the way he is...

So after that it was time for the group photo and I already knew exactly what I wanted everyone to do. I borrowed littlehollyleaf's halo and asked the actors who have played good guys to look angelic and the actors who have play bad guys to look mean.

'I'm a musician,' Jason quipped 'What do you want me to do?'

I told him he could do whatever he wanted. It came out really well. LOL



I love Jason in this and Jake who I think is going for half good half evil. LOL!

A bunch of us watched SPN (more on that in a seperate post) and then it was time for the meet and greet. This was most definitely the highlight of my con weekend for reasons which will become clear shortly. In fact it was pretty much the highlight of any con experience ever

It was set up very much like the wine party at Roadhouse. There were high tables dotted all around the room and they had drinks and candy on them (both of which will become significant later) so we stood around the tables in small groups and the actors came around and talked to us. Unlike Chicon we got a good ten to fifteen minutes with each actor and it was really cool.

Fred came to our table first of all and we had quite a serious discussion but it was really interesting. Our group was really quiet. It only really seemed to be me and dametokillfor talking and it wasn't like we were diving in and dominating the conversation. We just started talking when it became clear that no one else was going to.

I asked Fred what he was up to the next day as he wasn't able to be at the con. He said he had a 14 hour flight back to the states as he was filming early on Monday morning. He was flying into New York, popping home very quickly to change bags and then getting on a plane to LA. He explained that he lives in New York and there's plenty of theatre work there but not much in the way of TV and film. He loves doing theatre but it doesn't pay very well. To cite an example he said that one episode of a really bad TV show is the equivalent of seven months theatre work. I find it really interesting hearing about the ins and outs of the industry at cons so I loved listening to all that.

Then we got onto the subject of reality TV and Fred was saying that the popularity of reality TV makes it increasingly hard for actors to get work. He was saying that friends of his produce reality TV shows and it's really cheap to make and all they need are a bunch of people who don't get along, they ply them with booze and sit back and wait for the sparks to fly.

He was really friendly and interesting and I was glad I got the chance to talk to him especially as I missed his panel as it clashed with something else.

Next up we had Jake and Jason together and this was where things started to get interesting. We cheered when they arrived and Aldis, who was at another table, took this as a declaration of war. He tried to get his table to cheer louder, we started screaming. Then Misha got involved and held up a free blowjobs sign but we decided he was disqualified for using props and cheating. Hilariously then Jake and Jason started discussing what Misha's sign actually meant 'Is he offering to give free blowjobs or does he want to receive them?' So then Jake got up on Jason's shoulders to get us to scream even louder and the poor steward was freaking out in case he fell (and afterwards Jake admitted he was actually really scared of heights). Finally Jason called a tie with Aldis (but then came over and said 'I called a tie but we totally won that'). I really wish I'd spoken to Jason sooner. He's really really funny! I might have been inclined to go to his concert if I'd spoken to him a bit more earlier on. Ah well, next time.

Misha, again, resorted to throwing things. I swear he's like a small child in some respects...or maybe just an attention whore. Either way I didn't mind as all this did was kick things up a notch. Misha started off throwing sweets at Jake and Jason so they started throwing things back. This went on for a few minutes and then I said we should all join in. Jason's eyes lit up with manic glee and Jake quickly latched onto the idea too.

So we had all these little individual packs of Haribo on the table. We opened ALL of them and passed them around so that everyone at our table had a handful. I said we should throw on the count of three and Jason counted for us. I swear we must have thrown about a hundred sweets at Misha and his table. It was hysterical.

Since we'd run out of candy at that point we decided to draw things to a close. Jake suggested we play a game to amuse ourselves some more. I asked him what he wanted to play and he said that the game was his idea so someone else should choose what the game was. I asked Jason to choose and he suggested I Spy only he didn't seem to really know how to play it. 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with orange'. LOL. But before we could explain the rules properly it was time for a table switch.

Misha came over to us next and wanted to know what sort of party this was as there was no booze and we were joking that we'd been fighting him a minute ago but now we were going to make nice because we were fickle. One of the girls at our table (who was from the Philippines) who had been quiet until this point suddenly piped up when Misha arrived and wanted to know why he doesn't follow anyone on Twitter. Without missing a beat Misha pulled out his phone and said he'd follow her right now. After a minute he paused and said 'I don't actually know how to follow people - and I hate that term'. I offered to show him. I was kind of just expecting to talk him through it but instead he just handed his phone over to me without a word.

FOOLISH MISTAKE!

I actually grinned and told him that handing his phone over to a fangirl was possibly a mistake but he seemed okay with it and didn't ask for it back. So I was good and I did what he wanted me to do. I asked the girl what her user name is and I did a search and found her and followed her. As soon as I'd done it Misha told me to unfollow her but as I went to do it he told me he was only kidding and to leave it be.

Now, I don't know what he was doing at this point because he was standing behind me. I told him he had a nice phone (it's an iPhone 4 if anyone was wondering) and he said thanks. I assumed he was still watching me at this point but apparently he wasn't or if he was he didn't care. I started to tweet. What I was going to tweet was 'Hi! There is no booze here. England sucks'. I only got so far before his hand snaked over my shoulder and he took the phone off me.

I did not hit send on the tweet btw! I don't know if Misha hit send accidentally when he took it off me or whether he sent it deliberately but either way it wasn't me.

This is what posted



So of course he could have just deleted it. I wouldn't have been offended or anything. I half expected him to do that anyway. But he didn't. Instead he tweeted about it and berated me for having an underscore in my user name because 'it just makes things difficult'.



He did warn me before he sent it that with 100,000 people seeing my name I'd wind up with a stack of new followers. I said I didn't mind and that I liked making new friends so off it went. He wasn't kidding. I've had over 100 new followers since it sent and some of them are kind of insane. Like I was chatting to hsapiens about Castiel having to rumage around inside Sam looking for his soul and I cracked a joke on Twitter about how we were talking about Castiel fisting Sam. This one girl replied to me AND Misha saying 'Who is Hils and what is fisting. I am confused'

I'll just be over here dying of shame.

So after the tweet sent I gave Misha a hug and thanked him for making my night (doubly because he was wearing the brown cordory jacket so I got to touch it). He hugged me back and then said he was going to move to the other side of the table before I committed any more heinous crimes.

The whole thing was done in good humour and honestly it wouldn't have gone that far if Misha hadn't been happy with what I was doing. He was watching me pretty much the whole time and as I said he could easily have just deleted my tweet if he'd wanted to.

Yes, people have already been bashing me for 'stealing' Misha's phone so I wanted to explain exactly what happened. It was just a bit of fun.

After that I figured I'd had my moment (and then some) so I left Misha to talk to other people while I replied to all my friends on Twitter who were asking me what the hell was going on. LOL.

Aldis came over next and I had to show him a tweet that Matt Cohen had sent me earlier in the day. I'd told him that Aldis had been dancing on stage and that Matt had clearly set a trend in Chicago. Matt replied that Aldis was stealing all his thunder. I showed Aldis and his laughed his ass off and asked how that had come about. I explained and he said that Matt should be here. I totally agreed.

Honestly after that I was kind of still on a high from Misha and I was still trying to reply to tweets so I left Aldis to talk to the Philippino girls who seemed very enamoured with him. I may have spoken to him again but I can't remember what about. Oh, wait, I know. We talked about TV. He said he'd 'acquired' Sherlock and had loved it and now he was looking for more BBC shows to watch. I wanted to rec Merlin but for all I love it it is kind of cheesey.

Finally we had Julie over who was really sweet and said she wasn't as rowdy as the boys. Honestly I was ready for quiet by this point so we had a nice interesting chat about the language differeces between here and the US. She said she finds it confusing when over here if someone asks how you are the general response is 'not bad' which she always took to mean not good either.

I said that to counter that I never know what the correct response to 'what's up?' is and I always want to say 'the sky'. LOL. Julie said the general response to that is 'not much' so I learned something.

She was also amused that the word naughty means more different things over here or at least can be applied in more situations. She said people had been teaching her how to pronounce it in our accent. Hee! She then wanted to know what 'spend a penny' meant and I had to explain that it dated back to how much it used to cost years ago to use a public toilet.

After that she wanted to talk to the lurkers and went around to talk to the quiet people at the back. She was such a sweetie.

And that was the end of the meet and greet. The whole con was worth it for that one hour alone. Epic doesn't even begin to cover it.

So we missed Jason's concert which is a shame as Misha sang with his dad but there's video here if you haven't seen it already

Afterwards Fred stayed late to sign more autographs as he couldn't be here the next day. He was incredibly open and friendly and made conversation with everyone who went to see him. When I got there he carried on our conversation from the meet and greet like we hadn't stopped talking. He was really a genuinely nice man. I'd love to meet him at another con. He asked what my name was short for and made sure to use it when he said goodbye to me. Just awesome.

Holly, Kate and I decided we were too tired to go to the party so we sat in our room watching Chicon videos. We watched Richard's panel, Richard singing and the Jarded/Misha breakfast. After that Holly and Kate went to sleep but I was still pretty wired so I chatted on IM with hsapiens for a while until I eventually crashed.